Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Saturday, April 26, 2008

Ryan Stotts: Local heroes, local strength

By RYAN STOTTS / La Crosse Tribune

The people I’ve been fortunate to meet in the past three weeks are heroes. They wouldn’t describe themselves that way, but they are.

As a general assignment reporter, I write a variety of stories from week to week, but for roughly the past month I’ve been handed some weighty material.

Roadside memorials, cancer survivors (neck, cervical and bone), an organ donor family and recipient, and a holocaust survivor.

The general theme may seem grim, but it turns out every one of these stories — and the people in them — held a silver lining of hope and strength.

Tara Brueggeman, of Melvina, Wis., left an indelible impression. She lost her daughter, Betsy Anne Hemmersbach, in a 2005 car crash.

When I met this amazingly strong woman, she told me she was thankful to reconnect with the parents of her daughter’s fiance, Barb and Gary Emerson.

Together they stood near Betsy’s roadside memorial outside of Viroqua, Wis. While they saw each other around town, they told me they didn’t spend much time together.

“We don’t do that,” Brueggeman said. “We end up crying. Remembering.”

But a call the day after the interview thanked me for the opportunity for these two families to tell Betsy’s story and to see each other again.

There was Mary Jo Rozmenoski, from Black River Falls, Wis., who lost son Dustin in a 2005 motorcycle accident. His liver saved the life of transplant recipient Donna Frett from McHenry, Ill.

No matter what I asked, Rozmenoski had the same response.

“No question is too personal,” she said.

Ray and Joyce White, who live on Brice Prairie in the town of Onalaska, both survived cancer — neck and cervical,

respectively — and they held hands and looked

at each other with so much love, you’d have thought they were married yesterday, not 48 years ago.

Bone cancer survivor Rob Wagner, 20, from Milwaukee, was one of the most courteous, polite and candid young men I’ve ever met. His cancer went into remission six months ago.

Inge Auerbacher survived the horrors of the Nazi’s Terezin concentration camp, but she proclaimed to have never lost her faith in God or humanity.

In the face of such strength, such hope, such resiliency, how could anyone despair too much in this world?

Isn’t it comforting to know in your community, you can connect with the heroic?

When he’s not meeting local heroes, Ryan Stotts can be reached at (608) 791-8446 or ryan.stotts@lee.net.